How You Can Fix Your Sugar Addiction

Sugar addiction leads people to consume an average of 95 grams of sugar per day which is almost three times the American Heart Association’s daily recommended sugar intake.

This excess sugar consumption is contributing to increased rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity in America, and these diseases collectively cost the country over $100 billion per year.

The 21-Day Sugar Detox Daily Guide

Here’s a partial list of what’s covered in this article:

Why Is Sugar Addiction So Powerful?

What Does A Sugar Craving Cycle Look Like?

The Power Of Sugar Addiction

Steps To Overcoming Sugar Addiction

Low Sugar Food Recommendations

Breaking Free of Sugar Addiction

If you are able to break free from sugar addiction, you will also have achieved a few other healthful benefits; it is highly possible that you will have lost weight, you would probably be eating more healthily, and have more natural energy. It really is in your best interests to escape immediately from struggling with continual weight gain, dieting on and off, energy crashes on a daily basis, and your dependability/addiction to sugary foods.

Before you help yourself to another doughnut and wash it down with a soda drink, believing there is nothing that can be done for your sugar-addition, there is – there are a few outstanding steps you can take, starting from today, that will genuinely restore your body back to health, starting from within to revitalize you and boost your energy and strength again.

You need to realize that it is time to overcome your sugar addiction. Lots of people realize that eating a lot of sugar isn’t exactly the best way to go about holding on to good health, and certainly, a lot of them don’t begin to understand precisely how dangerous a sugar addiction is.

Are you suffering from sugar addiction? See if you are by looking at these signs and symptoms:

Is this you?

If you feel like you cannot go without candies and chocolates and cakes, etc.

When a bowl of ice-cream or one donut just doesn’t cut it anymore to get the satisfied feeling.

Sugar addiction isn’t only about sugar because all carbs get turned into sugar. Even though you have a sweet tooth, you want to eat pretzels or bread or potato chips like they’re going out of fashion

You keep exposing yourself to it, even though you know it isn’t good for your health, similarly like alcohol, cigarettes, the coffee machine, etc.

It is noted that if one of your parents suffered from dependence on alcohol, particularly your father, you might have a sweet-tooth dependency in your DNA.

You know it’s damaging to your health, but you still reach for seconds and thirds, even though you know your stomach will be aching and upset or you have feelings of guilt.

If you do decide to cut out sweets and you experience symptoms like moodiness, mental fog, headaches, even shaking, you could well be addicted to sugar

Why is sugar addition so powerful?

There are those who will protest that sugar is natural, that’s why it can’t be so bad for you, right? And yes, saying that does hold true for certain foods, for instance like fruit where sugar does occur naturally.

There are also plenty of nutrients therein as well. But unfortunately, most sugars that we consume today which aren’t produced naturally are very high-refined sugars and packed into all the processed pre-packaged foods lining the shelves in your grocery store.

There is no dietary sugar requirement either. Dietary requirements are proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Let’s put it bluntly – you should not and do not need sugar AT ALL in your diet. But the thing is, there is way too much sugar hidden in the foods we eat today on a daily basis. All this excess sugar can be indirectly or directly linked to the massive obesity epidemic that we see in our society today.

Most people don’t even realize that it is these sugars that can be blamed for developmental problems in children, even behavioral and psychological problems in both children and adults. And then what do we do – we treat these problems with prescription drugs but continue with the sugar!

What is even more frightening is that dependence on sugar kind of creates the need for even more sugar. It’s true that you are not going to suddenly become obese overnight, or that heart disease is suddenly going to come upon you the next day or week – sugar addiction starts working on damaging your system slowly but surely, inch by inch. It is not long before a sugar addiction has taken grip and the sweet cravings are part and parcel of your everyday life.

What does a sugar craving cycle look like?

You eat sugar, and then you start craving it because sugar has addictive properties in it.

Then your blood sugar levels start to spike and Dopamine starts to get released into your brain telling you that you are addicted.

During this time insulin gets secreted which helps to drop your blood sugar levels.

Your blood sugar levels drop rapidly and your body is desperate now for its sugar ‘high’ to cater for the drop in blood sugar levels.

You are now starving for something sugary to satisfy the craving, you might have a headache and feel jittery.

The above are caused by not what you are seeing and feeling on the outside but what is occurring inside of your body.

Believe this or not, this multi-billion dollar food industry naturally wants convincing and compelling reasons to keep the world’s sugar addictions going strongly. Why? Because financial sales figures depend on it – they don’t care about your health – let the doctors take care of that. If they can sneak sugar into any of the foods and still label them as foods that contain ‘low fats ‘or foods that say ‘no artificial flavorings added’, that’s all good.

Naturally, they are not going to say ‘beware – contains sugar’. They will rather make false claims to the health of the product rather than saying how much sugar has been added!

Say now you are out shopping; you’re on a diet and you want to cut down on all those snacks. You might start tossing in yogurts – they’re diet products, right? – Especially the low-fat ones. But did you know that most of these yogurts actually contain more than 30 grams sugar in a serving? Go check it out – it’s actually got more sugar in it than a chocolate bar.

And what about those ‘healthy’ breakfast cereals you are eating, the granola bars and the healthful fruit juices?

Despite our best efforts when we realize that sugar needs to be banned from our diet, to cut back, to try and eat only proteins, to add fresh fruit and veggies to our diet, despite all these efforts, it is possible that we could still be consuming too much sugar. Think about the fact that the average adult eats around 152-pounds of sugar every year!

And people aren’t waking up to this; it’s not getting better ….

Some say sugar addiction is as powerful as a cocaine addiction

Let’s just say that eating sugar ignites your nucleus accumbens? Nucleus accumbens, to put it simply includes kind of wanting and satisfaction signals. As you eat more and more sugar, more dopamine is released and that’s what gets you on the ‘high’; to satisfy and pander to the ‘high’.

Remember that sugar addiction isn’t just being emotionally reliant on refined foods and sweets. So if you are unable to resist sugar, don’t come down on yourself too much because it has nothing really to do with willpower, or you longing to change.

The fact is, your body has become dependent on sugar in the same way that one becomes addicted to cocaine. You believe that removing sugar in your diet is an impossibility – it can be pretty depressing to realize.

3500 Tasty Diabetic Recipes

But now we are back to the steps we were talking about at the beginning because there is hope. There is a cure for sugar dependency. If you follow these steps, studies will show you that you can break your sugar addiction in a matter of 2 weeks.

1: Get rid of all the processed and sugary foods not just out of your diet, but out of your house!

To resist temptation, start getting rid of the ‘bad’ straight away. Throw out sugary drinks, snack bars, yogurts, bread, baked pastries and other backed stuff, cereals – anything that has sugar in it. Don’t ever bring them back into your house until you are confident that your addiction is broken.

2: Ensure your breakfast consists of macro-nutrients

Sugar craving often gets stimulated simply because your body has not received the necessary nutrients it craves. An excellent way to get rid of those cravings or at least to minimize them is to have the right breakfast –one that contains the macronutrients – fat, proteins and carbohydrates.

3: Don’t forget your water

Don’t go any day without drinking plenty of water. Allowing your body to get hydrated increases the sugar craving and encourages your body to start to store fat. Drinking the proverbial ‘8 glasses of water a day’ is true, and if you exercise, drink even more.

4:Start preparing healthy snacks when you feel the need to eat

Remember that all those ‘healthy-on-the-go’ snacks that you usually grab at the store to fill your hunger pangs are actually packed with sugar and also refined grains, certainly not whole grains. Eat real wholesome snacks like sweet potato fries or carrot fries. Don’t let yourself ever get to the point that you are starving because then the sugar cravings will return. Snack on the real health snacks during the day. Look here too.

5:Get moving

In order to break your sugar addiction, your blood sugar levels need to be balanced as well – when you eat foods containing sugar, your body decides either to use sugar as the fuel it needs to operate, or it stores the extra sugar as fat. Doing daily exercises provides your body with the outlet to get rid of the excess blood sugar. Go for walks, do some stretching at your desk for instance – it all adds up to getting your body moving.

6: De-stress

If you have heaps of stress in your life, you can be assured that the sugar cravings won’t be easy to get rid of. You might be living on and needing those ‘highs’ that come from consuming too much sugar, and which become even more appealing when you see what it can do to reduce anxiety and stress! Get rid of the stress so you can get rid of the sugar.

7: A good night’s rest

It appears as if most people say their cravings for sugar are strongest towards the end of the day. Research says that sugar cravings are connected to the circadian rhythms and sleep patterns. If you don’t get into regular sleeping patterns and don’t get enough sleep, sugar addictions can and do intensify. The best thing to do is to start setting a good time to go to bed and sticking to it. Allow some lenience over weekends if you need to.

The 21-Day Sugar Detox: Bust Sugar & Carb Cravings Naturally

Don’t give up – for the sake of your body

You will find when you try these steps for yourself, that you can certainly cure yourself of your sugar addiction. It might be hard in the beginning, but in a couple of days’ time, you will even start to feel the difference in your body and your outlook.

So we now know that sugar isn’t good for us at all, the latest health fads and magazines tell us so. You might cut out sweets which are obviously all about sugar, but then you still have to battle the processed foods. All the glucose, sucrose’s, and the fructose’s that you see on products are a real battle to ignore.

Maybe even the thought of going cold-turkey scares and panics you, like the cocaine addict mentioned above.

Learn too, that sugar cravings can actually come from quite a few signals that your body sends to your brain, inviting you to binge on sugar. If you experience a sugar craving, it might actually be because you are feeling tired or even dehydrated or that your body requires a missing nutrient – possibly, phosphorous, sulfur or chromium.

But don’t worry, here are some wonderful natural foods to ‘help’ kick that sugar habit as you follow the 7 steps that we gave you above.

A homemade smoothie

Smoothies can be made from fresh fruits and vegetables, even better if you leave the skins on, for extra fiber, vitamins, and minerals plus phytochemicals. Adding some fresh raw or pasteurized milk to provide calcium works very well, and also protein powder – this will give you plenty of nutrients to take you through to lunch.

Plain yogurt with no sugar

It may be possible that your body needs nutrients like phosphorus which is found in real dairy, a building block for your bones. Choose plain yogurt over the ice-cream you might have opted for before. This will provide you with the necessary probiotics, helping your digestive health. Adding fresh berries to your fresh yogurt is simply delicious and keeps your blood sugar levels from rising.

Yes to oatmeal

Sugar cravings are a good sign your blood sugar levels are out of sync. It’s therefore important to eat low GI (glycemic) foods to crash the sugar cravings. Instead of biscuits with sugar in, make your own steel cut oatmeal biscuits, perhaps sprinkled with some cinnamon. Cinnamon is a well-loved spice, noted for regulating your blood sugar levels.

An apple a day

A sugar craving can mean a lack of chromium, considered to be a vital trace element – it metabolizes fats, proteins, and carbs. Chromium helps to improve high cholesterol as sugar is regulated in your body. Try this out: Slice up an apple, sprinkle it with cinnamon and microwave for around 30-45 seconds.

Nut Butter

Protein is tops when it comes to reducing sugar cravings, as it stabilizes the blood sugar levels. If you are trying to lose a bit of weight, keep nut butter down to only about 1 tablespoon a day. Ensure that you buy the ones that have no sugar added! A nutritious combination of fiber and protein could be whole-wheat toast with peanut butter on and even some celery sticks added.

A date with dates

Dates go back to Biblical times, noted for being a number one health food – a perfect replacement for sugar. They are packed with potassium and go a long way in preventing sugar cravings. Just go slow because one date can have 23 calories in it.

Beetroot

Beetroot is a natural sweet veggie and also can curb sugar cravings. Fantastically known for fighting inflammation in the body and high in minerals and vitamins. Beets are deal for purifying your blood and liver. Because they’re a good source of glutamine, they provide the body with the extra vroom that sugar might have done before. Roasted beets sliced up and served with some goat cheese over with some greens are a real winner.

Sweet Potatoes

Another naturally sweet vegetable, the sweet potato helps with sugar cravings, even though it is a starch. They provide rich sources of iron, potassium and other vitamins, particularly Vitamin A. It’s got L-tryptophan in it, an amino acid helping to make you feel calm and relaxed. Cooked sweet potato with some coconut oil over, a spattering of nutmeg and some Himalayan salt is a snack of note.

Vanilla

It has been shown that vanilla-smelling products can reduce a yearning for sugary drinks and foods. If this is not the case with you, delicious flavorings of vanilla can be added to your tea or coffee or even your water to continue the drive to cut sugar out of your life and body.

Sugar Addiction Conclusion

Sugar is really bad for you; it can have extremely negative effects on your body. The food industry will spend trillions of dollars researching different flavors for different foods; they will devise special chemical concoctions to make your brain crave more and more. Us people have strayed – we have moved away from eating nutritious foods in favor of sugary foods and fake flavorings, believing we are getting the real thing, but which ends in toxicity and addiction.

When last did you walk outside and pick an apple off a tree that was free from chemical sprays?

It’s time to recharge these bodies of ours, in order that we can function properly again so that we can decrease all that inflammation, so that we can have sustained energy, teaching our bodies to use real natural fat as our fuel source and no longer sugar.

We’ve only got this one body – which makes it of high importance to understand the types of foods going in that can affect the body for good for bad. If you want to live life to the fullest, cut out sugar, remodel your body from within, by eliminating that which is causing allergies, lack of energy, changing moods and more – do you want to live longer?

For better health, it’s time to get a handle on your sugar addiction – start today!

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